


salomé’s last dance

by ColdStarsAndStones



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, M/M, Murder, Murder Husbands, Mutual Suicide, Non-Graphic Smut, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Sassy Will Graham, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26723314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdStarsAndStones/pseuds/ColdStarsAndStones
Summary: To dance with Hannibal Lecter is to dance with the devil, with all that analogy entails..One setting the other in motion. But who can say which?He can’t live without Hannibal. Hannibal can’t live without him either, however, and that balance allows a strange comfort in their identical chains. Bound to each other and no one else.How unspeakably romantic, their eternal waltz.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	salomé’s last dance

**Author's Note:**

> Their love consumes me whole and without remorse. If you feel the same way, I hope you enjoy this!

To dance with Hannibal Lecter is to dance with the devil, with all that analogy entails. 

To exchange words quick and sharp enough so that they cut his cheek and then flit and linger like implication in the air. Their hunts, so primal that it must be dance, had left them deeply and irrevocably intertwined with each other like a red hot current in the air. Red strings of fate danced around their bodies, impaling them at intervals and pulling them together like puppets. Of course, Will and Hannibal held their own strings.

To writhe and keen under his body, that too was a dance. Clutching at his shoulders and raking nails down his back, wanting every individual cell in their bodies to join together as one. Silent gasps against his skin. Pleasure and hatred, love and devotion, ebbed back and forth with power, each crest pulling a noise from deep within his body, whimpering, and calling for Hannibal.

And he would lie with him afterward, aching in silent awe and gentle faded reverence. Let the lion doze, and admire his teeth as he sleeps.

Will let his head fall back onto his pillow and set back to glance at his beloved.

Occasionally, the corner of his mouth would twitch, or a finger would curl slightly, leaving a faint imprint on the sheets and Will knew he was dreaming. A more common occurrence these days, so he had said. Sometimes Hannibal would tell him what they were, what his desires and hatred and experiences morphed themselves into in the dead of night, but Will never asked. Even sleeping next to him, and with all the nightmares he himself underwent, Will shuddered to think what Hannibal Lecter dreamed about. 

His own dreams were still haunted by the sea greens of Abigail, even now, years later.

He thinks of Alana and for once is jealous. She had slept with the monster in his arms but he doesn’t envy her that. He thinks of her, and her wife, and their son. Whom they had fed and raised, taught and guided. He sees his own daughters face and lets the ice that chills over his heart melt in the next instant. Even now, he loves Alana too much to begrudge her her happiness.

Although he’s learned, Love doesn’t always mean not wanting to hurt someone.

“What are you thinking of?”

Will snorts, replies matter-of-factly. “Someone other than you. That upset you?”

“How could it? I’m always in your mind,” Hannibal answers, eyebrows raised.

He yawns and pulls the blankets up over his shoulders. It’s chilly. “And I’m always in yours. That’s our… symbiosis.”

Will pauses: “...our dance.”

His other half considers this. “An intimate gesture. Two spinning and moving in their own loop, their own time and space. One setting the other in motion, but who can say which?”

When no response comes, Hannibal finally cozies down beneath the comforter and settles in next to Will to sleep.

Who can say which?

He wonders that, as he drifts off to sleep.

. 

Will liked to think that he was the providing sort of partner.

Before Molly, he’d fished for peace of mind, for routine and a million other reasons, but coming home to a wife and child had put him in the mindset that every fish was an offering upon their table. A way of sustaining them physically, supporting them. Bringing home the bacon.

It was the same thing here, he supposed, finally letting the body he was holding drop onto the tiled floor with a small thud and a splat of red onto the gleaming white tiles. 

A stark contrast, pleasing to the eye no less.

Hannibal from behind the counter, sighed at his messiness but ultimately busied himself with prepping the tools for butchering. Will was starting to think that the lack of fine dining was getting to him. He had cut up some strawberries and bananas into his breakfast cereal the other day and had looked positively radiant for the remainder of the morning.

Quietly, they worked around each other, almost twisting and weaving around the other.

A macabre replication of domesticity. But then again, a replication with intent isn’t any less genuine, he thinks.

Suddenly, a hand is held out in front of him, before a smooth and smirking face, and Will manages to roll his eyes before reaching out and taking it.

The iron tang and fading fear scent are a kind of song in the air.

Hannibal leads, of course, and Will follows. He wonders if it will ever be any other way.

They move, sway, to an intimate, unheard melody. So close that Will can feel the warmth from his neck against his cheek. Feel the slight breaths against the cuff of his ear, like a warm, early autumn breeze. An arm secured, expertly, around his waist and another held out, parallel with his own. Fingers interlaced, as they danced and danced. 

Hannibal spoke, voice impossibly soft. “How do you want me, will?

Will’s voice comes low in his throat. 

“I want to kiss you. I want to kill you. I want to touch you...I want to do all of it at once.”

From under his hand, Hannibal's spine hitches ever so slightly. It’s as good as a flustered lip bite.

“Your hands around my neck then?”

Will’s arm holds tight around the other man’s waist, just below the verger brand burned into his skin. He often fantasized about carving it off. The whole incident lies with a dreadful anger in his chest. The humiliation and spilling of Hannibal’s blood at the hands of Mason, could not be reconciled with Will’s desire to see it on his own hands. The thought of someone else’s knife in Hannibal's body is an ugly one.

He cranes his head up toward his ear.

“Only. Mine.”

A moment of almost stunned silence, before it falls and Hannibal leans forward, closer. He sighs a soft phrase in lithuanian, intonation almost helpless, in a way that a predator imitates helplessness in play, in indulgence. It’s absolutely lovesick.

Will hums, questioning, and hears rather than sees Hannibal’s smile appear.

“Exactly what I just said.”

Will chuckles softly, smiling as he leans forward into his shoulder.

They dance and they dance in the blood soaked kitchen. They move through the grassy plains in the french countryside. His office, with bookshelves towering above them. They waltz in the middle of that decadent Italian church. And in front of the Botticelli, their meeting place, the shared rooms in their mind palaces.

The moon shines softly through the kitchen window. 

It provides them a spotlight.

. 

It began to storm later that night.

Storms on the coast were always so destructive a force that whole towns would pause their lives for a few days or even weeks to recover. No one would look for the couple they had devoured for a while yet. The wrath of God beat against the window, and faded memories of weathering countless nights at sea in his time came to him. At once, the cutting winds outside became a light sea breeze. His nostalgia was gentle tonight.

“A wonderful meal this evening.”

Will turned his gaze away from the window. He reaches up to unbutton his shirt. “I’ve had worse meals.”

Hannibal huffs a laugh. On the other side of the bed he stood near his dresser, content to take his time removing his clothes. Giving Will a post dinner show, it seemed. The least he could do was give a proper response.

“It felt symbolic,” Will ventures. “Our hunts always are.”

He feels rather than sees the questioning look.

“Date night.”

Hannibal laughs in earnest this time, such a rare sound, and Will chuckles. 

“Then I suppose our early psychiatric relationship was ‘flirtation’?”

“Our tentative beginning, appropriately enough.”

Hannibal hums and begins working off the links on his sleeves. Dressed to to the nines, even for a murder.

“Our courtship began thereafter.”

Will snorts, unbuttoning another button on his shirt. “Yes, the one you began by framing me for murder.”

With a soft clink, the two pinned cufflinks finally came undone, and he set them down on the bedside table. Then, he slowly pads across the room to Will, their faces now mere inches from each other, and his breath catches. Hannibal’s hands slowly come up, gently taking the shirt and sliding it down his shoulders. Years, he thinks, Years they had been apart. It had been so very long...

“...And the killing of the red dragon?”

Will sighs against his lips. “It was marriage.”

The thunder sounds and his mouth is met.

He loses himself.

Hannibal takes him with passion and power, makes love to him not just with his cock, but hands and teeth. Words and mind. In every single way, inside him. Will astride him, moving back and forth like crashing waves. Like swaying trees. They made nature and religion with their bodies, as though they were gods.

He could not tell where one ended and the other began. There was no beginning or end. They simply were.

His own tongue skillfully explores and caresses his mouth.

He rakes nails down Hannibals back and feels the phantom sting of claws down his own.

Will threw his head back in a silent cry of pleasure. When he glances back down, Hannibal’s face blends and Will is staring at himself. 

One setting the other in motion. But who can say which?

He can’t live without Hannibal. Hannibal can’t live without him either, however, and that balance allows a strange comfort in their identical chains. Bound to each other and no one else.

How unspeakably romantic, their eternal waltz.

.

Everywhere Will turned, there lay a body.

Arranged in a wide circle. A makeshift stage, upon which the final act would fall. 

The location itself, only a small field just outside of the city, was not the most poetic place, but that was fine. They had made it suit their needs.

Will could nearly choke with the smell of sweet florals and rot, supplemented by the acrid iron tang of blood that surrounded. He opened his mouth slightly, to see if he could taste it on the air. They spilled out of mouths and eye sockets, stab wounds and gouged out torso cavities. Blood stained the petals. Vibrant and dying. It was beautiful.

The flowers have bloomed past their peak, petals browning and blooms dying, already in their falling action, creeping toward conclusion. Hannibal of course had chosen and procured every single flower himself. Primarily snapdragons, dotted red with iron blood. Deviousness. Marigolds for cruelty, begonias for dark thoughts.

Camellias whispered of their longing, Edelweiss’ quiet, unyielding devotion.

Bedelia had once said that Hannibal’s death would be caused by whimsy, and she could now rest in (relative) peace knowing that she was right.

Even if it was by design.

The hollow, rotting husks of people seemed to echo their agreement at him.

Will had dined on their meat and organs the night previous. A grand last supper for just the two of them, and the blasphemy of the comparison set forth a most delicious taste in his mouth. Dread and excitement lay sweet on his tongue. Their end was nigh. And epilogue within sight, lain out like the pages of a grand libretto, beginning from the end, played out until silence.

The FBI would rush in, helicopters whirring and boots hitting the ground, Jack Crawford most likely at the head of the charge, guns loaded and at the ready like a swarm of flies onto a corpse. If they were caught… well, their minds held enough rooms of the past and each other to keep them sane. But they wouldn’t get there in time, if all went to plan. 

He clenched his fist in impulse, the familiar weight of the knife extending his body out into a blade that glinted in the moonlight.

Their blood would spill together and run black.

A more beautiful end could not be imagined. He locks eyes with his other half, and smiles.

A malicious and maze like darkness behind his eyes that perhaps only Will had stared into, found himself lost in and still stood alive. Made it his home, even. It had been easier to find his way when he saw, staring back in that darkness, a reflection of his own face and he wondered idly if Hannibal saw the same in his eyes. 

Hannibal grins and steps forward, extending his hand out slowly, patiently.

Will takes it, as he always has, brings his blade up to Hannibal's throat, and they begin their end. 

Their past spins around him, blurring into reds and dark browns and sterile white sheets and silver glinting knives clenched in practiced hands reaching out toward his neck to caress it and choke it all in one singular motion, the colors all blend together and become a river dark as wine, and for a moment Abigail is beside them, smiling at their love, her smile blending into the rest, only a blur of white as they spin and spin and dance and dance and dance.

Their eyes do not leave each other. They smile into each other’s darkness. 

The sharp cold blade against his throat cut shallowly with every movement. It hurts. It’s lovely. Blood is dripping down Hannibal's neck. Hannibal was walking toward death beside him, welcoming suicide, by his hands only.

Will falls in love all over again.

This was their moment. It had always been their dance, their constant embrace leading up to this singular finality.

The bright reds and blues that twirl in his periphery were merely the backdrop. The sirens only built their crescendo.

Will slowly leans forward. Hannibal does the same.

As their mouths meet each other in the middle, Will closes his eyes and falls.

He does not open them again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked this! Please leave a comment <3<3<3


End file.
